Best Education & Public Engagement
Special prize
Lecture series
The iGEM competition is primarily about research, but public relations work is also a very large component.
Therefore, we have made it our business to inform all interested people about the topic of synthetic life science and genetic engineering. With a total of 4 lectures the topic was critically questioned and illuminated from different perspectives. Our goal was to sensitize the population to important and topical issues and help them to distinguish between truth and lies. At the beginning of each lecture, we captured the general mood about the upcoming aspect of synthetic biology with a few questions. After the lecture, the same questions were asked to analyse whether the lecture changed the opinion of the audience. The first lecture was presented by our advisor Tim Blomeier and offered the audience a good overview of the field of synthetic biology.
On 5th of June Nicholas Schmelling, also one of our advisors, dealt with the various fields of application of genetic engineering in agriculture in more detail. He compared conventional breeding with genetic engineering methods used today and clarified the various definitions of synthetic biology, genetic engineering and breeding.
The third lecture was given by Dr. Christian Dumpitak and was titled: “I'm making the world, widdle widdle how I like it...!? ...and what ELSA says about it: Perspectives on synthetic life sciences”. Dr. Dumpitak started his lecture by discussing aspects of the short movie “Who are the engineers of the future?” by Christina Agapakis & Patrik Boyle (Ginko Bioworks), USA 2010. After a short discussion, he gave us an introduction to the history of genetic engineering, its legal regulations and how it can be distinguished from synthetic life sciences. “ELSA” (or “ELSI”) stands for “Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects (or Implications)“ and is a concomitant research in modern life sciences. In the light of ELSA, he discussed potentials, risks and ethical views on synthetic life sciences.
The last lecture on 03.07 was given by our PI Ilka Axmann. She focused on genetic engineering methods that are currently used in microbiology. Her presentation started with simple information about synthetic biology to build a basic understanding. After that the newly obtained knowledge was trained with everyday objects, where the audience - with some help of PI Ilka Axmann - had to guess the content of GMOs or genetically produced additions.
For us it is very important to give all interested people the chance to think about all possible aspects of Synthetic Life Sciences. In this context it was a desire for us to be available for all questions after each presentation. During pizza and drinks many listeners came to us with interesting questions and discussion topics, which could be talked about in a small group.
The results of our surveys show that there are still some concerns and prejudices against synthetic life sciences among the population. Some listeners were surprised and sometimes shocked as to which methods can be used in today's agriculture and which safe methods are prohibited due to ethical concerns. As feedback it was often a relief to know more about the topic and to understand the background better.
Survey
Furthermore, we surveyed the listeners before and after each lecture in order to get a general overview of the opinion on Synthetic Biology. As can be seen from Fig.1, 84% of the participants have previously dealt regularly with Synthetic Biology, 16% have dealt only now and then with it and none of the audience not at all. It becomes clear that our lecture series initially addressed only people who have dealt with the topic before, so it can be assumed that they are no strangers to the topic.
However, 50% of participants thought that Synthetic Biology has little or no impact on our daily lives (Cf. Figure 2). A balance arises in this question though as the other 50% of respondents disagree and are of the opinion that Synthetic Biology does have an impact on our everyday lives.
One of the most interesting questions on how much Synthetic Biology will change our lives has also been answered very well (Cf. Figure 4), and it is particularly interesting that 31% have a negative view of establishing newly developed products or processes.For our lecture series this means that we not only had supporters in the audience, but also critics.
In the end it was asked if the participants will now deal more with the topic. More than 67% believe that they will continue to do so on a regular basis and 33% will do so more often (Cf. Figure 2).
Heine meets Huxley
On the 16th of July we took part in the first event of “Heine meets Huxley” - a project brought into the world by the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf based on the dystopian novel “Brave New World” written by Aldous Huxley.
During the introductional event “Brave New World - cloned babies and super plants” aspects of genetic engineering were introduced and discussed which was a great opportunity for us to educate people about iGEM, synthetic biology and to still unfounded fears.
In his novel Huxley describes an utopian world in 2054, where baby clones are being genetically modified and assigned into classes based on their intelligence and labour.
Written in 1931 and published one year after, Huxley expected huge scientific advances in the future society but also a big downside to them.
Already in the first chapter - which was read to the filled room - we were introduced to a world of artificial wombs, excessive cloning and the manipulation of intelligence through different oxygen concentrations given to fetuses depending on their classes. A quite scary beginning.
The first talk given by Prof. Dr. Maria von Korff Schmising underlined different methods of genetic modifications used in plants and the effects - a bigger variety in foods - on the market.
After that Prof. Dr. Jan-Steffen Krüssel explained in vitro fertilization works nowadays and gave information about where Huxley had been wrong: For example, using less oxygen is not correlated with lesser intelligence but rather a natural environment in the oviduct of women.
Next was our turn. We prepared information booths to four topics: green biotechnology - the genetic manipulation of plants; red biotechnology - advances in medical fields through synthetic biology; white biotechnology - genetic engineering used in the bio industry and CrispR/Cas - a new technique in genetic engineering.
At each booth we arranged an informational video and a quiz about each topic to test our visitors’ knowledge about each topic.
After realizing that they often had no idea what products are already made by genetically modified organisms, people were shown everyday examples, such as detergents with enzymes, foods with added proteins and vitamins produced by microorganisms, to demonstrate the importance of synthetic biology in our everyday life. The spectators often weren’t aware and were surprised they had been using products of genetically engineered bacteria all along!
We also gave them several items for comparison, such as rennet cheese with microbial and natural produced enzymes, to let visitors decide which they liked best. Surprise: they liked both.
The green biotechnology booth introduced the people to the concept of Golden rice in comparison to normal rice.
For the red biotechnology booth we showed an exhibit of a pig pancreas and were able to explain that this had been used for insulin production a long time ago, whereas the production nowadays is a lot faster and less cruel. The visitors were relieved that a lot of animals don’t have to die anymore for medical advances.
In the end one question stood out: “Why do you think the society is afraid of genetic engineering and synthetic biology even though there are so many advantages?”
We realized this fear usually stems from the lack of knowledge about procedures, methods, laws and utilizations.
When given those information, a lot of sceptical people suddenly begin to understand the advantages of synthetic biology and start to abandon unrealistic fears.
March for Science Cologne
On the 22nd April of 2018 our team participated in the March for Science Germany in Cologne.
Every year hundreds of thousands of people worldwide demonstrate for free and not repressed scientific research as well as an evidence based policy. It is also used as a way to communicate with the public which has otherwise no or only little contact to natural science. This interaction is important though in order to create a positive picture of science in the public.
Our team met at the Domplatte in Cologne at 11am and together with the iGEM teams from Bielefeld, Bonn and Aachen as well as one thousand other participants we marched 2 kilometres (1.24 miles) downtown to the Rudolfsplatz. On the way there several interested people stopped and listened to our slogans for free science.
At the Rudolfsplatz a lot of speeches and talks from a variety of journalists, physicists and biologists, like Ranga Yogeshwar and Mark Benecke were given. We discussed fakes news and biased data of governmental proclamations as well as the repression of scientific work. An additional important aspect was the responsibility of the scientific community in representing themselves to the general public. Therefore the work of science journalists is very important for public relations. Some of the speeches picked out the working conditions of German scientists regarding permanent employment and resulting problems in life balance and family planning.
The speeches on the event were very informative and showed how important it is to be well received by the public. This event was the reason why our team decided to put more effort into public relations.
